The ROI on a more automated onboarding experience

If you’re a believer in first impressions then you’ll know how important it is to onboarding new staff members well.

You want new staff to bond with current staff and to get a broad overview of what they need to do and how they’ll do it.

The onboarding experience for new staff doesn’t have to involve multiple staff members, piles of forms, new staff members wondering what to do next or spending hours chasing up resources.

The ROI on streamlining a new staff member onboarding experience can quickly escalate depending on the number of staff in your company.

What are the key elements to winning with new staff onboarding?

Let your current staff know about your new hire. Send a brief bio, what role they’ll be filling and why they’re a great fit for the company.

Allocate another staff member as the key contact person for the new hire.

Make sure the new staff member has a workspace, computer & programs, logins, email and office supplies set up and ready to go.

Create a short introduction video that outlines the history of the company, what the mission statement is (aka the values to fall back on when you have no-one around to guide a decision), why the new staff member’s role is important and what the first week at the company will look like. Make the video quickly with minor edits, content over perfection on this.

Plan a team get-together or lunch in the first week.

Split your new staff member training into in-person training and online training (preferably through a staff intranet or set of dynamic SOP documents). Ensure they can the confidence to ask questions and have enough recorded resources to be able to reference the material again later.

Further refine this process to ensure that the hard work that you’ve put into recruiting leads to a long-term placement.

According to a study of over 1,000 people done by Bamboo HR, “31% of respondents had quit a job within six months of starting it.” Adding to that, “a steady stream of employees left from the first week all the way up to the third month.”

What did new hires really want?

How do you automate the process outlined above (& refined by you)?

You set a key person as the new staff member buddy

You set up the above process in a reusable checklist software program. This may be offered by your current project management software or might be a stand-alone product used for this process

Use forms to gather private feedback from the new staff member. This information is gold in having them feel heard and further refining your process

About the author

Rich Peterson | S&P

Rich Peterson has spent the last 10 years planning, mapping & reimagining the processes of hundreds of SMBs. Whether the goal is more money, more time, more clarity or more customer smiles, the painful process is worth every minute for our successful clients.